“Fucker,” he mutters, smiling again like an ass. “I hear you’re part of the neighborhood. Don’t think I keep eyes on things? Glad there’s gonna be audience for the beatdown you’re about to get.”
I step forward, but he’s quick and steps back, dancing around. Fucking poser. I assess our strengths and weaknesses in a split second. He may be faster but that’s fine. I’ll just wait for my shot. The fucker’s a chatty Cathy but I let him talk, waiting for my moment.
“After I ruin you, guess what else I’m going to ruin?”
I sniff, side stepping, muscles tense as the crowd bays for action. I focus on his face, fists tight and I lean back, weight on my left foot, one shot to the jaw and he’s going down. Ready, aim…
“Sweet Maggie,” he says and I hold. “I ruin you, Derrick’s got Anola and Maggie’s mine. That cherry’s been ripe for too long, don’t you think? She gets to watch the new neighborhood white knight get destroyed.”
I seethe, and my heart thunders as I put the puzzle together.
Maggie’s here? Fuck no…the split second of distraction is all he needs.
He manages a decent punch on me. It connects with my jaw but I’m a wall of granite.
I call up the memory of scrambling back across the kitchen floor, trying to get away from my father after he threw my mom across the room.
The meat tenderizing hammer she was using when he came in the house was there on the floor. I couldn’t fight him off, but she did. It was her last desperate act. She saved me but lost herself. My fists are that hammer and Dwight’s about the feel its wrath.
I duck out of the way of Dwight’s swing. He tries again and I dodge. The crowd is cheering but it’s muffled like I’m underwater.
My clenched fist rams through him like a semi, not once, not twice… I’m not stopping, not giving any mercy. His legs give way and I step forward, as the sound of the crowd comes back into focus.
“One Shot! One Shot!”
He’s laid out before me, gape-mouthed and defeated on the blood slick mat. He raises his hand and lets it fall, tapping the ground three times, giving up, and I should stop but I don’t.
I can’t.
I drop down, straddling him, raising my fist. Once, twice, three times I pummel him. Left, right, left. All my weight behind each punch, wielding my fist like the hammer, his head jerking back and forth, eyes closed, he’s taking the last train out of the station. He shouldn’t have said that about Maggie.
“Fight’s over.” Someone shouts. “He’s tapped out!”
I don’t care. I hit him again, blood covering my knuckles. Again. Again.
There are multiple hands around my arms, my chest, pulling at me and finally I let them lift me off. For one reason only…
Maggie. I don’t want her to see me kill someone.
I bust out of the cage, searching the crowd until I see her.
The piece of shit’s twin has Anola by the hair and Maggie by the wrist, dragging them down a hallway.
The rage is back with a vengeance and I’m at a dead run.
I push open the door at the end of the hallway where they disappeared with a crash and hear the scream.
“Get off her!” It’s Maggie’s voice, and I’m clanging down the metal staircase two steps at a time, searing heat flickering over my skin.
He’s got Anola pressed up against the wall, fighting off Maggie with his free arm.
“Fucking bitches.” I hear him grunt. “Dwight told him we were taking both of you tonight, and win or lose I’m taking what I want, that fucker may have taken the fight, but he’s not getting your little cherry. Or yours.” Maggie sees me coming but the asshole doesn’t.
I grab him by the back of the collar, yanking him back with one hand and tossing him into a cement pillar.
“Fuck.” He screams as he turns back. “You could have killed my brother!”
I bring my knee up into his stomach, doubling him over, then turn him sharply and smash his face back into the cinderblock wall. He yelps, goes limp and I drop him to the ground like the trash he is.
“Are you okay?” I ask, turning to Maggie and Anola, looking from one to the other.
Maggie is staring at me like she doesn’t know who I am, but Anola is looking in disgust at the busted garbage laying at our feet.
“What are you doing here?” Maggie half-shouts, shaking her head. “I hate that sort of violence. I hate fighting.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes violence and fighting are necessary evils,” I reply, not ready to explain myself, and Anola meets my eyes, then nods.
“He’s right,” she says, and to my surprise she steps forward, kicks Derrick in the stomach with the pointed toe of her stiletto.
“I’m taking you both home,” I announce, and meet Maggie’s glare.
Her mouth is set, but I’m not asking, I’m telling.
As we walk past Derrick, she turns back for a moment and gives him her own kick right in his ass and he moans, his eyes fluttering open. “You ever touch me or her again, you won’t be waking up.”
And I grin. That’s my girl.
12
Maggie
I finger the bracelet as we pull up at home, and Anola leans forward from the backseat of the sports car Jacob borrowed from some woman at the fight. I don’t know who she was, but I felt a pang of jealousy when she happily tossed her keys to Jacob.
“Thank you,” Anola says to me, then turns to Jacob. “Both of you.”
“Have a good night,” he replies, and I sigh.
Turning to meet her eyes, I force a smile. “I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”
“You call us anytime,” Jacob adds. “I mean it.”
She gets out and it’s silent inside the car as I still try to process everything that’s happened. Jacob frightened me, but it’s my own reaction that scares me more. I liked it. I liked how protective he was, not just of me but of Anola too. He’s like a god, a force of nature, and nobody can stand against him. I feel safe when he’s around, I feel small and perfect, his possession to love and cherish.
What is happening to me?
I’m trying to control my body’s reaction, trying to control my breathing and the thunder threatening to split me in two from the inside. I want to belong to him. I want to know that I am his, and that he will always do anything to keep me safe and loved.
“Maggie, I—”
“Not here,” I tell him, and when he meets my eyes and I feel like I’m drowning. If he told me to strip and lay back and let him take me right here, I’d do it. I’d do anything for him. And nobody should have that kind of power over me.
Thank God, that’s not what happens as I take a breath and he reaches for his door handle, and I do the same.
“No.” The word is deep, gravelly, and his hand on my wrist stops me. “I’ll do it.”
He climbs out and comes around to my side, opening my door and helping me out of the car. We walk together in silence toward the house, and when we’re inside, I follow him in silence up the two flights of stairs to his room. Once inside, I fold my arms over my chest and meet his eyes.
“So, that’s what your knuckles were all about. That first night, when I asked you about them. It was a fight. More than one from the looks of them. And the scar above your eye?”
“I fight. It’s what I do. It’s what I know. But this,” he points to his eyebrow, “this was different. My dad did this.”
For a moment, I don’t know what to say. His dad used to hurt him? Then how can he possibly do what he does? “I hate fighting, Jacob, my dad was a fighter. Well, sort of—”
“I know. Thomas told me what happened. About your dad, about your parents. I know what happened with Thomas when they sentenced your father to the same block…” Jacob falls silent, but that wound healed a long time ago.
“My dad deserved what he got. My grandfather did what he did and I don’t hold that against him,” I say, nodding. “I hate that Grandpa’s little three-year sentence ended up a he
ll of a lot longer...I miss him. But I don’t miss my dad. I’m glad he’s never coming home.”
“Baby, we’re so different but we’re the same. My dad killed my mother. I tried to save her, tried to fight him, but I lost. I’ve been trying to win that fight ever since.”
“So, where’s your dad?”
“Dead. Last thing my mom did before she died, was kill him. I was ten.”
“God, Jacob.” She shakes her head. “I was ten, too. How could it be that we have all that in common, but you turned toward the violence and I turned away?”
“Because you had Oma and Thomas. I didn’t. I had the system. Two paths can start off in the same direction, but not end up in the same place.”
“I don’t think I can live with the fighting.”
“I’ve lived this all my life. I don’t know any different.”
“I can’t have someone in my life who could turn into a monster at any time. That’s what I saw tonight in the ring, you were a monster. You were two seconds from killing Dwight. Then Derrick…”
“I’ll never hurt you,” he says, and we look at each other for a long moment.
“How can you be sure? When that thing inside you takes over, you’re not in control.”
He doesn’t say anything right away. I watch his eyes watching mine, and I shift from one foot to the other. My adrenaline is still high from everything, but I want him. Even now, even through the doubt, I want us.
“I’ll never hurt you,” he repeats, harder, more definite. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. In the ring…those people made a choice to be there. They want to test themselves against me and there’s a part of me that will always be fighting that fight with my father. It’s what drives me. When I win, it feels like nobody can hurt me or the things I love again. I’ve never hurt anyone that didn’t deserve it or volunteer for it. That’s the difference, I didn’t figure it out until now, but that’s it, Maggie. That’s the difference between me, your father and mine.”
There’s a long silence, Jacob curls and uncurls his fists and I believe him. But, there’s something else… “Who was that woman?” I ask, surprising myself with the venom in my voice. “The one who lent you her car, who was she?”
“Nobody.”
I take a step closer to him, then stop myself. “Nobody is pretty.”
Jacob laughs. “Nobody compares to…” He draws a quick breath, looking me up and down, and I feel the tension buzz through me.
“Nobody compares to…?”
“To you, Maggie. Nobody will ever compare to you.”
I stare at him, biting the inside of my lip, the jealousy still bubbling under the surface. I believe him. If he tells me she’s nobody to him, I believe that’s true.
“You’re mine,” he says. “I’m never letting you go, Maggie.”
“And if I choose to walk away?”
Jacob shakes his head, and it’s like the universe is telling me no. I’m caught, frozen, held in place by some invisible force as he crosses the room and takes me in his arms. “Mine,” he seethes, and then his lips are on mine and there’s nothing left to say.
13
Jacob
It’s been a week and I’m becoming domesticated, even if it’s sometimes against my will.
“Maggie will be home from work soon and I don’t want her to have to cook.” Oma slips the apron over my head and stands behind me, tying the strings, and I am helpless to stop whatever this is that’s happening. “You can manage, I’ll show you what to do.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, just do it.” She turns and shouts out of the window. “Kielbasa! Kabanosy! No!”
I glance to where she’s looking out the back window and see the dogs trying to dig under the fence again and it just reminds me of the first time Maggie touched me.
Maggie. I wonder if I’ve already put a baby inside her? Is my seed already growing in her belly? The thought makes me proud and angry, because other people are seeing her right now and she’s not tied to me.
“It’s Sunday. Aren’t you going to be here for dinner?”
“No, I’m going to bingo.”
The dogs rush through the open back door and into the kitchen. I snap my fingers and give them a look, and they turn and head to their beds and lay down, panting wagging their tails.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Oma says and I shrug.
“Just something I do.” I look down at the ridiculously small pink and white apron she’s got me wearing. “But, isn’t bingo Saturday? I don’t know how to cook—”
She shakes her head, then points to the kitchen table, where there are candles and places set close for me and Maggie. “Just you never mind about my bingo. I have already done everything for you. You just need to keep stirring this one and make sure this one doesn’t burn. My ride will be here any minute. So it’s just the two of you tonight…” She says the last words like there’s some meaning in them, and I wonder just how much she knows, and how much she guessed.
“Just the two of us,” I repeat as the dogs must hear something, they start barking and fly back out the door into the yard.
“Just the two of you. And don’t bother waiting up because I’ll be back late and I’ll see myself to bed. I’m sure you will both be settled in by then yourselves…”
Okay. She couldn’t be more obvious if she was winking at me. So, I have Maggie’s grandmother’s approval, I guess.
She pushes up on her tiptoes and looks out the window into the back yard. “Kielbasa!” she shouts, making me jump. “Now they’re digging under the shed. Come and help me with these motherfucking dogs.”
She grabs my arm and marches us both down the path, just in time to see the two dogs slip into the shed through a gap at the bottom of the door.
“Damn dogs,” she mutters, making me chuckle as we get to the shed and she pulls open the door. “You’re the only one they listen to.”
Inside, it’s already chaos. The dogs have knocked into a block of shelves chasing a squirrel that’s inside, and there are empty plant pots and potting soil all over the floor. The squirrel makes a retreat through the open door and the dogs follow as I bend down to help pick up some of the disaster they’ve left behind. I pick up a couple pots and get the shelves back upright, then bend down and grab a little wooden box with the letters LR carved into the lid. Something about it feels familiar.
“Sad story there,” says Oma, a frown pulling at her lips. “I’d forgotten that was out here. From the old neighborhood before Thomas and I moved here. We got some new neighbors just a few days before we moved. Always fighting, or the husband was always fighting anyway, the wife was just trying to survive.” She shakes her head. “You can look. I should throw it away, has bad memories even for me. If I was superstitious, I wouldn’t have kept it this long.”
I open the lid, there’s a lock of hair and some old photos of a baby. “Why do you have it?” I ask, as I flick through the photographs.
“Was horrible. Shook the whole neighborhood. The husband killed her and she killed him. He pushed her through some glass, they had a little boy there during the whole thing. She managed to run to our house, the son was on the front lawn, covered in blood, just standing there. I opened the front door...” Oma takes a breath but I’m already cold. “She was begging for help, begging for me to take care of the boy. I think she knew she was dying. The police showed up, the ambulance…but she didn’t make it and I never knew what happened to the boy. I found the box a few days later, tossed in our front bushes. I guess she dropped it when she was trying to get to our front door. I tried to find out how to get it to the young man, but because he was underage, I couldn’t get any information and I didn’t trust to just give it to someone. So, it’s been here ever since. I was probably wrong to keep it.”
By the time I find the birth bracelet in the box, I already know who the baby is.
“Roger Riley.”
Oma nods. “Yes, the woman’s name was Lydia Riley an
d the boy Roger, named after his father.”
“He changed his name when he was sixteen.”
She turns, confusion in her eyes. “What? How would you know that?”
“Roger Jacob Riley. His mother’s maiden name was West. Lydia West.” I rub my finger over the carved initials in the box. “I’m Roger Riley. Lydia was my mother.”
I feel Oma’s hand on my shoulder and wipe my sleeve over my eyes.
“I changed my name when I was sixteen. I didn’t want anything from my father, especially his name.”
“You’re not your father, Jacob. You have his fists, but you have your mother’s heart, and that’s important.” She offers a soft smile. “I always felt that box would find its way home. Guess that’s why I held onto it. The Lord knew what he was doing when you came here Jacob West. Now, come on, I smell something burning.”
Maggie’s lips are tight as she looks at me, putting her fork on her still-full plate. “That was…”
“Delicious?”
“Interesting,” she says and laughs.
“That bad?”
She shakes her head. “No, not bad. You’ll get the hang of cooking when you do more of it.”
I frown, putting my own fork down. “Do you want me to order pizza?”
“No. I’m okay. And it really wasn’t bad. Just could have used a little more stirring. And a little less seasoning.”
I chuckle. “I’ll learn. For you, Maggie, I’ll learn anything. I’ll spend my life working to make you happy.”
She blushes, looking down. “Wow, I feel special.”
“You are special,” I growl, annoyed. She should know how special she is. If a sculptor carved the perfect woman, they still couldn’t get close because it wouldn’t be her. “You’re everything. You deserve the world, and I’ll work my whole life to give it to you.”
One Shot (The Anti-Heroes) Page 8
